The Working Time Directive: Officer Health and Safety and Police Efficiency
| Published date | 01 January 1999 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X9907200102 |
| Author | Carl Mason,Kevin Wardman |
| Date | 01 January 1999 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
KEVIN WARDMAN
Senior Lecturer in Law, Liverpool John Moores University
CARL MASON
Merseyside Police Management Development &Training Unit
THE WORKING TIME DIRECTIVE:
OFFICER HEALTH AND SAFETY
AND POLICE EFFICIENCY
The aim of Directive
931104IEC
on the organization of working time
within the European Union (The Working Time Directive),' forms part
of the European Council's stated goal, contained in the original Treaty
of Rome
1957,2
of
establishing minimum requirements for encouraging
improvements, especially in the working environment, for all nationals,
in order to ensure a better level
of
protection of safety and health
of
workers.
It
is important to remember that at the core of this European
Union mission, like many others, is a recognition of the social, political
and economic issues surrounding the attainment of a single internal
market between member states and not any intention to directly become
involved in issues
of
national security or civil protection. However,
improvements
"must
not be subordinated to purely economic
considerations",' and the attainment of a single market is required to
lead to "an improvement in the living and working conditions of all
workers within the Union both in the public and private sectors" and
this will include the police. An important part of any amelioration in
working conditions will be to establish some regulation over working
time and to set minimum standards with regard to its organization and
duration which can then be applied across all sectors of the Union.
The Directive, incorporated into UK law by the Working Time
Regulations 1998,4makes specific reference to certain sectors
of
employment where not all of its provisions will apply. This will be
where the nature
of
particular aspects of work activity "inevitably
conflicts" with the requirements of the Directive. The police is one such
named sector,'
It
should be borne in mind, however that this initial
partial exemption
of
the police is only to the extent that an objectively
defined "conflict" can be found to exist due to "characteristics peculiar"
to police operations." There is no definition or examples given of such
'inevitable conflict(s)' though the Directive goes on to recognize other
"special cases" where particular 'activities' may not be suitable for the
application of the Directive's provisions. These include situations where
at the beginning
of
an employee's period of work the future duration of
working time cannot be measured or predetermined by the worker with
any degree of accuracy: this may be the case with some police work, for
example, where officers are involved in public order duties. Other
2The Police Journal January 1999
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